A typical drive-thru car wash consists of a series of hoses, cleaning elements, sprayers, and fans that may automatically execute a cleaning process on a vehicle. A drive-thru car wash can either utilize brushes or be brushless depending on the setup of the car wash.
In a drive-thru car wash utilizing brushes, there is typically a plurality of different kinds of brushes that may provide physical contact with a vehicle driving therethrough. The brushes may extend radially away from a rotating axis and provide for a repetitive contact with the vehicle when it is within the range of the brushes. The car wash may also have brushes that fall from an oscillating frame. The brushes may contact the vehicle as they oscillate back and forth with the frame. Both the rotating brushes and the oscillating brushes utilize water and/or a cleaning compound sprayed onto the vehicle or applied by the brushes to aid in removing dirt and grime.
In a drive-thru car wash utilizing a brushless system, high-powered jets may spray the vehicle with water, a cleaning agent, and/or soap to remove the dirt or grime. In this type of car wash, the jets are strategically placed to sufficiently spray the areas of the vehicle that are most susceptible to accumulating debris. Additionally, there may be many different jet stations. Each jet station, may execute a different step in the car wash process. For example, a first jet station may rinse the entire vehicle with water, a next station may spray the vehicle with a high pressure water/cleaning agent composition, and a final station may spray the vehicle with a water/rinsing agent composition.
In either the brushless system or the brush system, the drive-thru car wash may have a forced air drying system. This drying system utilizes a plurality of fans to provide high-speed air drying to the surface of the vehicle prior to leaving the drive-thru car wash. Alternatively, some drive-thru car washes apply a spot-free rinse to the vehicle as a final step. After the spot-free rinse is applied, the vehicle is intended to dry clearly without utilizing high-speed air drying.
All types of drive-thru car wash processes incorporate the use of chemicals to adequately clean the vehicle. Many drive-thru car wash stations utilize many different chemicals during the car was process. For example, a different chemical composition may be used in the car wash to provide a waxing affect, a wheel cleaner, an underbody wash, a clear coat, a tire cleaner, and/or a spot-free rinse. Typically the chemicals used to provide the various car wash features are maintained in a concentrated form. When the particular chemical providing the desired feature is needed, it is drawn from a reservoir and diluted with the appropriate amount of water prior to being dispensed onto the vehicle.
The cost of the car wash often depends on the lost volume of chemicals used to execute the wash and the cost of each chemical. Accurately determining the expense of a car wash process requires knowing precisely the lost volume of each chemical used for each car wash process.